Tú y usted: dos pronombres de cortesía en el español actual. Datos de una comunidad peninsular

Abstract

The empiric data of this research, developed on a Spanish speech community show the social progression on the use of pronoun tú, even in formal contexts reserved so far to the form usted. On the other hand, the paper considers the possibility of the dicotomic alternation between those pronouns of address in contemporary Spanish as an expression of two classes of politeness: positive politeness and negative politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987). The aim of sociolinguistics and other related disciplines is to analyses the psychological, social and contextual factors that may move individuals and social groups to choose one model of address or another. Some speakers, like younger people or women, especially in non instrumental speech events and situations, have a significant correlation with the use of tú in the speech community studied in the paper.